Feb 9- Post by Charles

I am neglected this blog for too long, so today, I finally sat down for a few minutes to capture what we’ve done.

My last update was before Ramsey arrived, so as you can imagine we’ve been blazing through all the things to do in Dubai. The first week Ramsey was here hit up a few of the vast shopping malls. Choose your shoes wisely because it’s a lot of walking. Strangely enough, the malls are full of people, but many of the shops are empty. I do not know how many of them stay in business.

We have visited the Spice Souk, which sells mainly knock off watches, purses, luggage, and sunglasses. Occasionally strewn between the pirated goods there are some spices, without prices, and a blaring salesman encouraging you to try his spice. They Spice salesman explain all the benefits for your heart, blood, brain, sleep, pain, chi, feng shui, tai bo, and whatever else they think might help you buy. We ended up purchasing nothing having lost any will to after the full court sales press.

We have had a few nice meals since arriving, all of them pricier than any meal we have ever eaten in Houston. The atmosphere and quality are fantastic, and we are really enjoying ourselves. One night we partied on the world famous beaches of the “The Palm” at the Atlantis hotel. There were beautiful people everywhere, a fantastic DJ, all complete with Victorian era women walking around on stilts, jesters juggling fire, anything to keep up the energy. The drinks were expensive, our bar tab that night exceeded our grocery bill for 3 weeks, but a beach party under the full moon, overlooking the downtown skyline was worth every dollar.

Ramsey goes to the beach a few times a week, she’s pretty tan now. Rams is living a fully integrated ex-pat life, fearlessly waving down cabs to travel across town, to the grocery store, wherever she needs go. So far she hasn’t driven the car anywhere, but that will change soon.

More later- and pictures to follow- Charles